Another striking feature in much of Aristotle's attitude is a certain sense of moderation. Moderation is one of the qualities generally indicative of the deeper harmony we have termed "totally" in human life. Extremism is generally more characteristic of egocentric disruption.
In the name of justice and fairness, we shall here have to admit that the Ionian physiologues, from whom Aristotle may have inherited part of his peculiar "down-to-earth" tendency and a certain monism, did not always distinguish themselves as particularly moderate. We have pointed out that they were comparatively simple and monistic, it is true, in their general views. But sometimes, in their very simplicity and monism, they are seen to go to great extremes. In fact, we wonder if some of the first Greek philosophers were not so entirely possessed by the idea of unity that they pushed it to quite paradoxical extremes. We all know Zero's affirmation: if things could really be divided, one would never reach a term where the division would cease. Thus he tried to prove the impossibility of dividing things up at all. "How could anything be made up of parts?" he required. Such a thing would be at the same time infinitely small and infinitely big: infinitely small because of the smallness of the parts at which one would arrive if the dividing continued without end, and infinitely big because of the endless number of the resulting parts (See Zeno, Fragm. 1). Well known is also a similar sophistic argument of all movements being impossible, because covering even the shortest distance would imply passing an infinite number of points. Aristotle, too, alludes to this in his Physica (223a, 20).
We may mention Parmenides, that most illustrious representative of the Eleate School (inaugurated by Xenophanes, by the way, who claimed an absolute unity of the being and its absolute permanence). Certainly we here have to admit a certain inexorability and extremism. It is the being and its absolute existence as eternally identical with itself, without any mixture of not-being. All the notions we form of the real, imagined as a multiple thing and subject to becoming, imply the existence of a not-being. But multiple things are different from each other. What one is, the other is not. And a thing which is only in the process of becoming, must be different from what it is to become by and by. A really capital problem is made out of this: can we admit the existence of the not-being? According to Parmenides, all philosophy depends on the solution one finds to this dilemma: the being is--the being is not. To be or not to be--that is, indeed, the question of the being. (Fragm. 4 and 8, V. 15-16)
In all this there may not seem to be too much of simplicity and moderation. Frankly speaking, even Aristotle was by no means any paragon of simplicity and moderation. But where is the typical theorist who distinguished himself as genuinely simple and moderate--in his theories? Nevertheless, we cannot help mentioning here a curious fact about Aristotle's attitude just towards the question of moderation, considered from an ethical point of view. In this case, what we should call a definitely practical and well-balanced view, may here be pointed out. In book II of his Nicomachean Ethics his theory of virtue as the just medium is exposed in the following remarkable way.
Vice consists precisely in the excess. Of course, that is no unique or properly Aristotelian doctrine. But Aristotle has quite noteworthy formulations on the subject. First he warms us against a specific danger of deception: we should not think that "medium" here indicates a certain "mediocrity". Not at all!
It is rather the very opposite. The just medium is the perfect measure, the absolute top. And to reach that top is particularly difficult. For there are a thousand ways of falling into excess, and the various vices deriving from that. Therefore it is so easy to be vicious. But there is just one single way of attaining the right measure. Therefore nothing is more difficult to realize than virtue.
Of course the tendency itself of placing such infinite value on the virtue of moderation is just a popular Greek tendency. Moderation was, indeed, a virtue of nationwide culture in Greek antiquity. And perhaps something here may, at least partly, explain why the concept of "areté" in the Greek community had such a broad and firm position. Virtue was, in fact, a thing quite commonly accepted, at least to a far larger extent, we think, than in societies of typically modern civilization. It evidently did not have that immediate connotation of a certain demureness (Norw. "dydsirethet") which we moderns seem almost unable to avoid when we speak about a "paragon" of virtue" ("dydsmönster"). Perhaps it is an inevitable characteristic of an environment of supercivilization to be rendered split and disharmonious by a certain sophistication of the adult, an actual panic lest one might appear somewhat childlike the naive. Especially young people in our culture seem to feel frightfully embarrassed at the thought that their environment might suspect them of being virtuous! (See our chapter, "The Renaissance, an Adolescence Period in the History of our Culture", Tot. in Christ. Anthr., III, 4.)
Both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages man in the Western world is still a child, and fairly undisturbed by his childishness. So he accepts even such an old-fashioned thing as virtue. But just as in the ancient Greek community one reason for the quite popular acceptance--among young and old--of what they conceived as essentially virtuous, may perhaps also be found in the very definition given to Greek virtue by some historians: areté is something highly active. It is the ideal, but also eminently practical, unfolding of good human qualities for the common benefit. The paramount virtue is the civic virtue. Another obvious reason, however, why "virtue" here succeeded in maintaining its nation-wide popularity, was presumably just that instinctive avoidance of all excessive strivings, of passing all decent limits which nature has clearly set for mortal human creatures.
We hope we are not ourselves passing the limits, as we are trying to show Aristotle's "down-to-earth" trend--as compared to his most famous colleagues in the, for human totality, so dangerous trade called philosophy. But we must say we have been almost astonished to see the stress this philosopher places on the practical--at least theoretical!
Aristotle bluntly informs us in the same Ethica Nicomachea that we do not possess virtue until we have put it into practice. As it is with art, so it is with virtue. "Men become builders by building, and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so, too, we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts." (Eth. Nic., 1103 a, 30)
This may seem a truism and commonplace. For of course no man would be such a fool as to imagine that he can become an architect without constructing things, or a great musician without starting to make music. But many men seem to hope that they may be eminently just without making the slightest effort to practice justice. However, there is no other way invented by gods or by men. In order to become courageous anybody is bound to simply step down to the practical reality of accomplishing acts of courage. Virtue is formed through its practical application, or it is not formed at all.
And then please notice what follows. It is not a word of any exceptional philosophical profoundness perhaps. But it implies a noteworthy perspective of totality and monism right in the heart of human ethics, a perspective which has not at all proved to be a matter of self-evidence in the tradition of human ideas. We have touched the question in our first chapter, and shall give it special attention in our Vol. III (part IV, "Is the Christian Anthropology Radically Dualist in Ethical Respect?"). The trend of Aristotle's principle is simple enough: by performing a vicious act one becomes vicious. By performing a virtuous act one becomes virtuous.
Is Aristotle so radical in his monism that he immediately conceives the "performing of virtuous acts" and the "being a virtuous person" as inseparable sides of one single reality? No, he obviously sees the two as consecutive rather than as concomitant events. "We get the virtues by first exercising them," he says. And the whole tenor of the passage is that of practical moralism, more than that of speculative philosophy. The idea is mainly that a habitual repetition of certain actions eventually causes a certain character to be formed: "In a word, the moral dispositions hang together with (Tricot translates: proviennent de) actions which resemble them. That is why we should orient our activities in a certain direction, for the diversities characterizing them, draw along ("entraine") corresponding differences in our dispositions. So it is not a negligible work to contract, from our tenderest youth, such or such a habit. On the contrary, this is of major importance, nay of total importance." (Eth. Nic. 1103 z, 20- Tricot)
Anyway, the stress is laid on the practical side. Aristotle is, so far, astonishingly practical. But now we are also bound to come to a point where a different Aristotle makes his appearance. We come to features in his total "Lebensauschauung", his general view on the values of life, where we must openly admit that he entirely leaves the path of alterocentric wisdom. And perhaps nobody could expect a philosopher--particularly a philosopher in Aristotle's time--not to leave it.